Despite the conventional wisdom that women are more emotional than men, research shows that men fall in love far more quickly and easily than women, while women take much longer to trust and commit.1 Why would this be the case?
Any organism has two problems: survive long enough to reproduce and disperse your genes as wide as possible by actually reproducing. By solving those problems, a being survives through its offspring. Those characteristics that make us who and what we are get passed down through our offspring. Our thoughts, desires, behaviors, and emotions all get passed down, just like our hair color or physique.
Human beings’ behavior has evolved to solve their needs. Yet the forces of evolution that shape these behaviors change very slowly, while human society changes much faster. As an example, when humans were hunter-gathers living in caves, finding food was difficult. Those that had a taste for fats and sweets took in more calories and survived to become our ancestors. Yet today, the preference for fats and sweets is causing an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Our behavior lags our culture.
Most of the time, men and women solve their problems of survival in the same manner. While living in a cave, boys and girls could be abducted or raped by strangers, or eaten by predators. Children that were scared of the unknown and darkness were much more likely to not be harmed. Today, a baby has the same fears, no matter if it is a boy or girl.
When it comes to dating and relationships, though, men and women differ greatly because of simple biology. Yet men and women make the mistake of thinking that the opposite sex thinks and wants the same. This gender-centric thinking really causes problems when it comes to dating.
In the recent past, say, after 1960, society has changed to where male and female equality was the goal, if not the norm. But men and women are very different when it comes to mating psychology.
The goal of mating, biologically speaking, is to make a baby. Men and women contribute equally of their genetic material. But men and women invest unequally of themselves when it comes to mating. A man manufactures sperm continuously and does so for life, and the mating process is over once he has made his donation. A woman ripens a single egg per month, and only for a limited number of years. Once she has accepted the donation, that is the start of a nine month period that has a heavy impact on her life.
Think about cave man days. What does it cost your average cave man to mate? It costs a few moments of his time. The more times he could mate the wider he spread his genetic material and the more likely his genes survived. The man who preferred casual sex reproduced better than the man who preferred monogamy. So the biological pressure is for men to prefer casual sex, whether he acts on it or not.
For the cave woman, the costs are much higher. Pregnancy is a high-risk operation in the cave. She may die in childbirth. While pregnant, and later, while caring for the child, she is in a poor position to gather the food she needs for herself and her offspring. Is there any wondering why she would prefer casual sex?2
In caveman times the woman that plays around dies. The woman that is picky survives through her child. Even today, women that are casual about their partners tend to live shorter lives, as do their children. Women that choose providing, protecting dads tend to live longer and so do their children.3
In ancient times, women who cared about resources and commitment solved some nasty biological problems. Today, that same need is expressed in women’s psychology that is finely tuned to whatever signs of wealth in their culture, whether that is an advanced degree or a nice car or a larger farm. Straight or lesbian, young or old and regardless of the society. Women want men with resources.4
But even more important that having resources is the desire to share what you have. In a survey on dates, the most common “worst” that women mentioned is a man that is cheap. For even though a man has resources, if he won’t share, he won’t provide. And the evolutionary requirement is for a provider, not a banker.
If a man is young, the ability to improve his resources, through education, hard work, starting a business, is a demonstrable sign of potential resources. Many a man has been supported through school or the lean times of a startup. For older men, attained wealth is more important.
And the most important sign of willingness to provide is commitment. Pursuit is the strongest signs of commitment. Calling regularly, planning future dates, old-fashioned manners like holding the door, all are symbols of pursuit, which equals desire and commitment.
Women are seeking someone who is both willing and able to provide and protect.
Men have desires and needs, also. What do they want?
When men are choosing a life partner, they are just as picky as women, just not about the same things.
Remember, men are producing sperm all the time. But women have a limited window of fertility. Just about any man will do, when a woman wishes to become pregnant. But a given woman may not be able to bear a child. Too young, too old, nursing, ill. Men who were attracted to wrinkles and a round waist may have existed, but they didn’t perpetuate their genes. Instead, modern men are descended from ancients that valued youth and beauty.
What do men value: clear skin, white teeth, an hourglass shape (the perfect 0.7 waist/hip ratio). All these are signs that a woman is fertile. These are all inherited and are subconscious. Blind men that have never seen a woman still prefer women with a 0.7 waist/hip ration – they choose by feel!
That’s why straight women and gay men try to appear as youthful and beautiful as possible. One simple way for woman to do this: date men 10 or more years your senior.5
The takeaway is that we are ruled by our inherited behaviors. Even though our culture or our personal situation might say that we be different, we will still tend to behave the way our ancestors did. To be successful at modern day dating, we need to think and act to meet the needs of the other sex.
1. In a Journal of Social Psychology paper, Marissa Harrison interviewed 172 college students if they had ever been in love. The men were prone to fall in love much quicker, declaring their love in weeks, while the women were more cautious, typically taking months.↩
2. In fact, many times, the casual sex isn’t casual for the woman. In a Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality paper (11, 1-24), 44% of woman versus 9% of men said they engaged in casual sex to try to get a long-term relationship. After attraction, the second most common reason for casual sex was “I actually wanted a long-term relationship with this person, and I though sex would lead to something more long lasting”.↩
3. The Evolution of Desire, 4th ed., David M Buss, Basic Books, 2003.↩
4. Buss, Strategies of Human Mating, American Scientist, 82, p. 238↩
5. D. T. Kenrick, Age preferences in mates reflect sex differences in reproductive strategies, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 15, 75-133.↩
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I welcome your helpful comments, but please remember these are just random musings on life, not life philosophy. YMMV!